Serial Killer with Piers Morgan

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Serial Killer with Piers Morgan

“Listen, I’m here because, first of all, you’re not paying me for the interview, I’m not here because I want to meet you. I’m here because I need to present the evidence because , again, let’s go back to the fact that I conned, liar, cheat, whatever you want to call me, fine. That has nothing to do with taking three innocent lives.” - Convicted serial killer Alex Henriquez

In this new documentary which is part of ITV’s Crime & Punishment season, Piers Morgan goes behind bars to find the truth from Alex Henriquez, a serial killer convicted of three murders in New York City.

Henriquez, convicted nearly 30 years ago for murdering two girls aged 10 and 14, and a 21-year-old woman in the Bronx, has never spoken publicly about his crimes. Now Piers aims to get beneath his lies and deceit to uncover the truth.

Alex Henriquez is serving 75 years but continues to maintain his innocence.

The programme explores how a national outcry followed the death of 10-year-old Jessica Guzman in 1990 prompting NYPD to put together a task force to investigate the string of murders that had haunted the Bronx for two years.

No one suspected that Alex Henriquez, a successful local businessman, would be the police’s prime suspect but, as the investigation began, Henriquez came to the attention of NYPD. He was the last person to have been seen with young Jessica and was well known to the other victims.

Piers: “See I have to decide, Alex, are you just a guy in prison now as an innocent man or am I looking at somebody who did do that? In which case you’re one of the worst people I’ve ever met in my life.”

As Piers explores the case, James Fitzgerald - a legend in the FBI and the man who caught the Unabomber, a 1990s US terrorist - becomes involved.

With James’s help Piers discovers psychological clues in Alex’s behaviour which expose the real man behind the lies, and brings Piers closer to the truth.

James Fitzgerald: “Psychopaths like control. They don’t want to be controlled, they want to control others and they’ll do anything within their power, through lies, through manipulation, through even violence to get those points across. To them it just makes sense because it’s what got them this far in life in a sort of successful method of surviving.”

Alex Henriquez was eventually found guilty of Jessica’s murder and of two others. He maintains he was made a scapegoat by the NYPD and is an innocent man.

Juror: “I keep calling him a gentleman, I don’t know why but that’s the way I was brought up, but this piece of garbage...he was always there; he was always around where things happen. You know, you say coincidence, coincidence happens every once in a while. Everybody in that jury room knows that he did it and he knows that he did it. There was no other person that could have done it but him.”